Unknown (First of the Blade Book 4) Read online

  UNKNOWN

  First of the Blade Book 4

  D.K. HOLMBERG

  Copyright © 2022 by D.K. Holmberg

  Cover by Damonza.com

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Note

  Series by D.K. Holmberg

  Chapter One

  INTERLUDE

  The sacred temple looked different from this vantage. The mountain stretched up, almost impossibly high, the white snowpack making it appear cold and imposing in a way that it had only partially felt during her time there. It had never been the temperature of the sacred temple that had been cold, though. It had been the people.

  And now she headed away.

  This was not how Imogen had planned to leave the sacred temple. She had envisioned leaving the sacred temple as a master swordsman, having come with such promise. But that dream had quickly been dashed as she had come to learn that she was not the superior swordsman that she had long believed herself to be. What did it matter that she had been one of the youngest Firsts of the Blade in her village when there were dozens of them all throughout the Leier homeland?

  Having come to the sacred temple the way that she had, and with the imposing cold having taken so many promising candidates until only Imogen and one other had remained, she had believed that she had earned the right to train and the right to stay.

  Master Liu had proven her wrong.

  She rested her hand on her blade. At least he hadn’t taken it from her.

  “What should I do, then?” Imogen had asked him, though she hadn’t really expected an answer.

  He’d stood next to one of the tiger sculptures, the eponym of their sacred temple, and had stared off into the distance, as if watching the swirling snow to find answers within the wind. “Let your quest be the guide.”

  “But my quest is impossible.”

  There were many of the Firsts of the Blade who took bond quests, though generally they did so because they didn’t know themselves well enough to know how they might be able to serve the Leier. Imogen had believed that she knew. She had come to believe that she had proven herself well enough to serve her people, either as a master swordsman or within the army, though Master Liu had made it clear to her that General Derashen did not want her.

  “The quest is not worthy unless it is challenging.” He still hadn’t looked at her. Ever since she had made the decision to leave, he had not looked at her. It was almost as if he wanted to hide his disappointment, or perhaps it was his way of showing his anger at her failings. “Do you want to find yourself worthy?”

  Only then did Master Liu look in her direction. He leveled his gaze at her, and she felt a trembling deep inside.

  “Of course I do,” she whispered.

  Imogen hadn’t even dared to draw her sword and had not taken an opportunity to spar with him one more time, knowing that would make no difference. She’d been in the sacred temple for the better part of three years, and though she had been shown the sacred patterns, she had never mastered them to his satisfaction. That had been her failing.

  She had believed that she was precise, that she knew enough to use those sacred patterns in ways that could prove her worth to Master Liu, but every time she tried to show him what she had learned, he had called her sloppy.

  Her. Sloppy.

  “If this is what you think I must do, then I will do it. I will prove to you that I am worthy.”

  Imogen hated that she’d said it that way, as if she had to prove something to him.

  And he knew.

  His lips quirked. Master Liu was old, and he watched her, his wrinkled brow furrowing, his pale, thinning hair pulled back into a bun. His robes flowed around him, looking overly large for a man of his size. Still, despite his age and apparent frailty, Master Liu was the greatest swordsman that Imogen had ever encountered. She had never threatened him.

  “Do you think it matters if I feel you are worthy?”

  “I do if you won’t continue to train me,” she said.

  “And what must you choose?”

  “I choose to…” Imogen looked at the tiger. It was a massive sculpture, one that was regal and proud, and one that would not run from a challenge. The tiger never did. Imogen, on the other hand, had.

  Three years.

  She’d come when she was fifteen. She had thought that by the time she was this age, she would have returned to her people with notches on her blade proving her worth. Instead, here she was, ready to depart her land, leave her people, and head into the unknown, all because she had proven she didn’t belong.

  Master Liu regarded her, and for a moment, she saw a little sympathy in his eyes. “You see this as an ending where you should see it as a beginning. What you have believed about yourself may be wrong, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take another look and find a new truth.”

  She nodded, uncertain about what she could say, feeling shame.

  “That is the purpose of the bond quest, Imogen Inaratha. You must learn who you are, and what you are meant to be. Let the quest guide you. Let the quest show you what you must learn.”

  Imogen had no idea how the quest could show her anything other than that she no longer belonged with her people, but she wasn’t going to say that to Master Liu. She wasn’t going to challenge him about anything, as she had little doubt that he wouldn’t understand. This was the sacred sword master of one of the five sacred temples, a man who helped guide their people and who had trained all the greatest warriors of the Leier.

  “Will I be permitted to return?” Imogen asked.

  He regarded her for a long moment before he turned his gaze away, looking out over the snowcapped peak and torrents of snow that began to twist and spin, dancing on the wind. “I cannot say. Only you can decide if you will be permitted to return.”

  It was a cryptic answer, and the kind of thing that she should have expected from somebody like him.

  She waited for him to offer her another measure of advice, to provide her with some well-wishes or perhaps to offer her some hint of what she might do to be successful, but he kept staring out and away from her, watching the wind, watching the snow, and ignoring her.

  When Imogen finally turned away, heading toward the trail leading away from the sacred temple, she did so feeling as if she had trul
y lost some part of herself.

  Perhaps it was foolish to feel that way. There had been a time when Imogen wouldn’t have cared what someone like Master Liu said, as he had known who and what she was, but her time here had proven that there were so many others of greater skill, so many who had progressed, eventually getting a notch on their blade and leaving with the sacred sword master’s blessing. Not like Imogen was.

  She blinked away the tears streaming into her eyes, more angry than anything else—at least, that was what she told herself. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely anger. There might be a part of her that was sad, but not because she had failed Master Liu. No. She was sad because she had failed herself. She had believed that she was destined for greatness.

  And here she was, one more sacred sword master who was a disappointment to the Leier. That was all that she was now.

  Days passed as Imogen trudged down the mountainside, watching the snow swirling around her, feeling the cold on the wind as it whipped at her cloak, pulled at her hair, tugged at everything as it tried to push her farther and farther down the mountain.

  She had to brace herself, knowing that there was danger in losing her footing. Heading down was just as treacherous as heading up, though as she went down she felt as if the mountain itself were pushing her, guiding her along the trail, forcing her to climb up snow-covered rocks and scrape her hands as she dug into the stone for grip before she found the trail on the far side of some boulders that were piled up before her.

  When Imogen finally reached the base of the mountain, she turned, looking up. The wind wasn’t quite as cruel here and didn’t tear at her the same way, but it didn’t need to be. There was enough cruelty in what she had endured to make up for it. She looked up the mountainside, watching the snowcapped peak, looking for any sign of the sacred temple. From here, she could not see it. She still felt as if she had some connection to the sacred temple, as if she could almost feel it, but she knew that was imagined. She took a deep breath, tore her gaze away, and turned, heading west.

  Imogen would complete her bond quest.

  And then she could consider returning.

  But only then.

  It was late on the third day after descending the mountainside when she found the narrow road running away from the Leier homeland. It was strange for there to be a road like this, as they didn’t have many travelers in the homeland, but it was hard-packed and only a little overgrown, suggesting that someone traveled through here. Ruts along the road suggested wagons. When she reached a branch point, she paused. One direction headed north. Koral lands, she suspected, though Imogen had never been to them herself. She’d heard the stories of the Koral, and the danger that they posed to her people, but had never seen them herself. Had she joined the army, or had she gone with Derashen, she might have come to experience that danger firsthand.

  Now she never would.

  What did it matter to her that the Koral and their shamans practiced the kind of magic that her people knew to be dangerous and dark? Imogen would never have to deal with that unless she succeeded in her bond quest and managed to return.

  She followed the road. The wind pushed on her, as if it were guiding her, sweeping her along and lifting her pace, forcing her from the rocky foothills out into the grassy plains, and from there toward forested land that was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Her homeland was nothing like this.

  She paused and camped for the night at the edge of the forest, not afraid of entering. That was what she told herself, at least. Imogen didn’t believe that she feared anything in the forest, though she did hesitate to enter it. Strange, mournful sounds emanated from inside, which left her with fitful and poor sleep so that she did not feel as if she were well rested by the time she awoke.

  Imogen sat with her back to a trunk, her mind a blur. She knew that she should get up and work through her traditional patterns—or perhaps even the sacred patterns, though there was no point in that any longer, as she could not use them in any meaningful way—but she was still too tired. Instead, she let her mind wander, moving through the patterns internally.

  She’d once heard Master Liu talk about using the patterns like this, holding on to them in her mind so that she could see them in ways that she couldn’t otherwise. Imogen had never attempted to do so and did not know if it made much of a difference, as she would much prefer to work through the patterns with the blade in her hand. Still, as tired as she was, she didn’t think that she could hold her sword the way that she needed to.

  As she forced her mind through each of the patterns, she marched through them. When she was done, she felt more awake than she had before. She got up, looked at the forest, and started inside. The darkness swallowed her, and she hurried along, letting the wind force her forward. She didn’t know exactly where she was heading but had a general sense of where she needed to go. Master Liu had provided her with that as well. Not only had he given her the bond quest—something unusual enough for their people—but he had given her instructions on how to begin. He had really wanted her to leave.

  It took nearly a week to cross the forest.

  In that time, Imogen heard strange howls, an occasional shriek, and other soft murmurings that threatened to force her to turn away. Each time she felt the temptation to do so, she thought about what it would be like if she returned to the homeland having not completed her bond quest. She thought about what it would be like to return to her village having failed in the sacred temple. She thought about what a disappointment she would be to her people.

  And to her brother.

  That pushed her the most.

  Imogen had never been particularly close with Timo. He had always looked up to her, and she had been so focused on mastering the patterns that she hadn’t bothered to be there for him the way that she should have been when their parents had been lost. Imogen wondered if, in hindsight, that had been a mistake. She could have helped Timo progress the way that she had progressed. She could have helped him find mastery of the patterns so that they both could have gone to the sacred temple.

  But then they both would have failed.

  By the time Imogen reached the edge of the forest, she was tired from having not slept very well. She was hungry from having scavenged only for berries and small grubs, not having wanted to venture off the road so that she would lose her way, and she was thirsty. She had encountered a stream only a few times. There had been times when she’d thought that it was the same stream that she kept coming across, as if the stream itself were creating a circle that she followed, pushing her back the way that she had come, but she had continued along the road and found her way free of the forest.

  Imogen should have made better preparations for leaving the homeland and the sacred temple, but that was not what one did on a bond quest. It was the warrior and their blade. Nothing else.

  While trudging forward, Imogen stumbled.

  She lay on the road for a long time. She lost track of how long she was there. The sun shifted in the sky, but given her mindset, Imogen had no idea how long that was. The only thing she knew was that a faint tension along her skin had begun to build.

  It took her a while to realize what that was. She had trained to detect it but had never done so.

  Magic.

  Imogen sat up. Her sword was unsheathed in a moment, and she looked around her.

  There had been no sense like that in the forest. For everything that she had feared she might encounter, she had not come across anything to suggest that there was any strange magic in the trees. This was the first time that she had come across anything.

  Magic.

  She got to her feet, looking around, and began to focus. She was tired, hungry, thirsty, and filthy from the road.

  None of that mattered any longer.

  She was Leier.

  And she was a warrior. She was a First.

  She was trained to handle magic.

  The tension on her skin began to build. It started slowly and crept along her
back, such that she turned, facing away from the forest. That was the direction of the magic.

  That was where she needed to go.

  Had Master Liu known she would find this here?

  It was about midday when the tension began to build again, and Imogen recognized that the magic was intensifying. She had found a stream, paused to drink, and yet still felt hungry, though increasingly she wondered if that even mattered. She could survive without food. She needed water.

  A solitary shape in the distance caught her attention, and when she turned to it, the tension intensified. That was the source of magic. Imogen darted toward it, sword in hand, racing toward whatever that strange shape might be, thinking that she had found a sorcerer. Maybe she could complete her bond quest and return, though it couldn’t be so easy. A bond quest worth anything would not be easy.

  When Imogen reached it, it was little more than a pillar of stone shaped like a strange, sinewy, snakelike creature. The level of detail on it was incredible. She’d never seen anything quite like it. She worked her way around it, following it from its barbed tail up to its head, where two intricately carved eyes looked out at her, tracking her as she moved around.

  She stood, feeling the energy and the strange tension, which suggested there was some sort of magic twisting and constricting around her.

  Imogen brought her blade up. She met a strange resistance.

  Then the stone pillar began to twist.

  The tension all around her intensified.